Billy Earl Dade Middle School Demolished in South Dallas

South Dallas closed a chapter last spring when community members gathered at the corner of Malcolm X Boulevard and Al Lipscomb Way to say goodbye to the old Billy Earl Dade Middle School building, a structure whose story stretches back more than a century and runs through nearly every demographic shift the neighborhood has ever experienced.

DISD Trustee Ed Turner hosted the farewell ceremony, and he didn’t reach for soft language. “Today, we stand on sacred ground, a place with a complicated past, a powerful present, and a promising future,” Turner told those gathered. “We’re not just turning soil, we’re turning the page on a new chapter in the story of Sunny South Dallas.”

The building is coming down.

A three-to-four-month demolition process is underway to clear the site for the proposed $50 million Adelio Williams Career Institute East, a workforce training facility currently housed at Lincoln High School. The project carries real weight in a neighborhood that has watched resources flow elsewhere for decades.

The school’s history is long and layered. Founded in 1912 as John Henry Brown School, named for a former Dallas mayor and state legislator, the campus originally served South Dallas’s Jewish community. As the neighborhood’s demographics shifted, so did the school’s identity. It was eventually renamed for Billy Earl Dade, one of Dallas ISD’s first African American principals, a quiet but significant acknowledgment of who the community had become. Dallas ISD closed the campus in 2013 after opening a new Billy Earl Dade Middle School directly across the street.

Diane Ragsdale, former Dallas City Council member and a fixture in South Dallas civic life for four decades, spoke at the ceremony. Her remarks framed the demolition not as erasure but as obligation. “It’s not that we are eliminating the past, because we cannot understand today if yesterday did not happen,” Ragsdale said. “We need to honor the past but also celebrate the future that this institution represents, an institution that will help improve the standard of living for future generations.”

The land itself almost went a different direction. Brent Alfred, Dallas ISD’s chief of construction services, told attendees the old Dade site was put out to bid, and a wealthy outside buyer expressed interest with plans that would have amounted to a provocation, reportedly including a statue intended to taunt South Dallas residents. Not great. DISD pulled the property back. “We heard loud and clear from the community that this land belongs to the people who lived with it, suffered by it and dreamed through it,” Alfred said. The district retained ownership and kept South Dallas residents at the table.

That decision to hold the line matters. Preston Hollow and the Park Cities have long benefited from institutions, both public and private, that treat neighborhood identity as something worth protecting. South Dallas deserves the same baseline assumption.

The new facility carries the name of Adelio Williams, a South Dallas plumber who died in 2021 and apparently earned the kind of community trust that doesn’t come from a title. At a Dallas ISD board meeting on March 20, eight of nine board members voted to rename Career Institute East in his honor. The Dallas Independent School District serves roughly 145,000 students across a city where workforce training options remain unevenly distributed, and the Adelio Williams Career Institute East is a direct attempt to close that gap on the south side.

Dr. Todd Atkins, senior pastor at Salem Institutional Baptist Church, also spoke at the ceremony.

Questions remain about the full bidding process and the identity of the buyer Alfred referenced. Dallas ISD declined to provide context or agree to interviews on the matter, directing reporters to file an open records request instead. The Dallas Free Press, which covered the ceremony, reported that response directly.

The building will be gone soon. The name on the new one will belong to a man who fixed pipes and earned his neighbors’ respect. South Dallas has seen worse outcomes.